When companies do not acknowledge online customer complaints… well, hades hath no fury like the customer scorned. Ignoring one unhappy comment can evolve into a social media carnival where the company clown gets pie thrown in their face all over the internet.

According to the article, there are 3 easy steps to take to prevent an epic social media failure:

Participate. It is important that organizations don’t let a fear of someone saying something bad about them stop them from participating in social media.

Don’t assume all comments require the same level of attention. Develop an appropriate response for the different types of interaction your business faces.

Plan for an increase in social commentary and adapt communications practices to cope. This will require changes to job descriptions, performance metrics and business processes.

Deleting an angry comment may seem like the easy solution, but no good will come of it. Consumers want satisfaction and a polite communication can start paving the way to reasonable resolution in most cases.

This gosling does not need a crystal ball to predict that social media will continue to have a major effect on businesses in the future.

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining
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